Serranus Clinton Hastings

Serranus Clinton Hastings

Serranus Clinton Hastings (born November 22, 1814 in Watertown , Jefferson County , New York , †  February 18, 1893 in San Francisco , California ) was an American lawyer and politician . Between 1846 and 1847 he represented the state of Iowa in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Serranus Hastings attended public schools in his home state, New York, and was a teacher at Norwich Academy himself in 1834 . In 1835 he moved to Lawrenceburg , Indiana . There he published the newspaper "Indiana Signal". After a subsequent law degree and his admission to the bar in 1837, he began to practice in Burlington in what would later become the state of Iowa in his new profession.

Politically, Hastings was a member of the Democratic Party . After the establishment of the Iowa Territory , he was from 1838 to 1846 a member of the Territorial Government Council, of which he was chairman in the meantime. After the founding of Iowa, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in Washington, DC , in the first congressional elections still held state-wide, for the new state's first mandate, where he took office on December 29, 1846. He ended the legislative period that ran until March 3, 1847, and then resigned from Congress because he had refrained from running again in the regular congressional elections of 1846.

From January 26, 1848 to January 14, 1849, Hastings served as Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court . He then moved to Benecia , California. In his new home state, too, he became the presiding judge of the Supreme Court . He held this office between December 1849 and December 1851. Between January 2, 1852 and January 2, 1854, Hastings succeeded James A. McDougall as Attorney General of California.

After the end of his time as Attorney General, Hastings withdrew from politics. He initially entered the banking business, in which he was unsuccessful due to bank insolvency. Then he started working in the real estate market. In this branch he rose to be a wealthy businessman. In 1878 he donated the money needed to establish Hastings College of the Law , the University of California's first law school . For this he was appointed dean of this institution. He also supported the establishment of the St. Catherine Academy in Benicia with financial means. Serranus Hastings died in San Francisco on February 18, 1893. He had been married to Azalea Brodt since June 10, 1840, with whom he had nine children.

Web links

• Serranus Clinton Hastings in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Serranus Clinton Hastings in the database of Find a Grave (English)